The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy

by Roger Deblanck

  “What’s in it?” asked Juan.

  Alberto undid the buckle and flipped the flap open over the top of the bag.

  “I don’t believe this,” said Alberto.

  “My God,” said Juan, looking inside. “How much do you think is in here?”

  “I have no idea. Could be thirty, forty grand. We won’t know until we count it.”

  Wads of twenties, fifties, and hundreds filled the bag, mostly old and wrinkly bills. She must have been saving for years.

  “Juan, look, here’s a note.”

  “What’s it say?”

  Alberto opened it and read the three words: “Para mis hijos. For my sons.”

  A small heart was drawn neatly under the pronouncement.

  “She can’t buy our love,” said Juan.

  “She doesn’t need to,” said his brother.

  They donated all their mother’s belongings, except for her jewelry, to the Salvation Army. When they returned to their grandparents’ house, they showed the jewelry box and the bag of money to Huberto, Evelina, and Cuca. Together, the five of them counted the money: thirty-five thousand, all U.S. currency.

  “She must have been saving since back in Cuba from the school and the salon,” said Juan, shaking his head.

  “I think so,” said Alberto.

  “We will need to deposit this, an equal amount in each of your savings accounts tomorrow,” said their grandfather. “This much money in the house is not safe. As for the jewelry, I’ll work on getting it appraised and sold. Whatever it goes for, we’ll again split it between you two.”

  The brothers agreed.

  “Why don’t you work on a letter to your father?” suggested their grandmother.

  They had trouble composing the letter that night. They agreed to sleep on it. On Monday morning they talked about how they would work separately on their own letters. Then in the evening they would choose the better of the two or combine ideas from both. They’d mail the letter Tuesday morning.

  But when they came home that evening, their grandparents already had the television on. Kennedy was speaking, telling the world how Khrushchev had made the earth the most dangerous place in the universe. Not even the heavens could imagine.

  * * *

  Chapter 40

  The world watched on the evening of the twenty-second of October as the Oval Office was transformed into a broadcast studio for Kennedy to announce to the world that in Cuba “a series of offensive missile sites are now in preparation on that imprisoned island.” To halt the sudden nuclear crisis, the president reiterated that he wanted peace, the same as any moral citizen in the world, but he also declared that the United States would remain steadfast in its resolve to end the conflict sensibly, starting with the implementation of “a strict quarantine” of all incoming Russian vessels to Cuba’s shores.

  As Kennedy broke the shocking news, Juan stared into the gray, droopy eyes of his president on the black and white television screen and knew he was watching a burdened man, a man facing the ultimate test of fortitude and courage, a man who cared deeply about his country and the fate of the world. But on that Monday night, Juan thought the president looked vulnerable—a vulnerability born not of fear, but commitment to his duty that even if he did everything right to prevent a catastrophe, he might not be able to stop the inevitable, might not be able to protect the earth from the possible onslaught of Armageddon ahead.

  As Juan, Alberto, their grandparents, and Cuca huddled before the television to take in the solemn news, their fears were real, but shared as one because they were a family, like so many thousands of American families, forced to face this crisis together. But without Florencio with them, the Ramos family’s hearts felt like scattered stones. The mere thought of his father trapped in Cuba made anxiety cramp up in Juan’s gut, the acid in his stomach feeling more and more as if something other than distress was burdening him.

  As the days of the crisis wore on, Juan became paranoid about things slipping out of control in the hands of the players: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro. Every American, Russian, and Cubano soldier at a base camp or on a war craft had loaded arms at his side. A single mistake could spark the next world war—the last war, a nuclear holocaust. The First World War had started with a single lunatic’s bullet against the Archduke. And now if a U-2 were hit while flying reconnaissance over Cuba, what would Kennedy do? If a naval officer fired on a Soviet craft that refused to stop at the quarantine line, what would Khrushchev do? If the marines at Guantanamo exchanged rounds with the Cubano militia, what would Castro do?

  Fear ate away at Juan’s stomach. No matter how hard he tried, his mind filled with thoughts of the first flash, the blinding strobe of destruction. The heat and force of the explosion would drive outward for miles in widening concurrent halos. Everything would be flattened and incinerated in the expanding circumference of the concussive blast. A mushroom cloud and torrents of black ash would consume the horizon in man’s last days. Whatever’s left after the apocalypse will not be an Earth where anyone can live, Juan thought. Black dawns and even blacker twilights would span the days of razed cities and smoldering towns. He knew this was the brink. He couldn’t believe it had come to this: Kennedy facing Khrushchev and Castro for the final showdown. The fate of Earth was a giant ball of fire tumbling through the cosmos. He could hear the vicious crackle of the flames, feel the heat like a match held an inch from his eyeball. He felt as though his insides had been scraped out with a shovel. His hollowness was a closed, empty coffin. At that moment, he’d rather see the light than be buried in a bunker as the world disintegrated, a crumbling star, all of humankind melted in one ocean of blood.

  Juan closed his eyes and thought about his father. If the United States used nukes to attack Cuba, the radiation sickness alone would burn Florencio’s throat and invade his lungs.

  He talked the dilemma over with Alberto. They discussed how Kennedy must find a way to lead the world out of this darkness before it was too late. He was the President of the United States, his first duty was to protect the people of his country, and so he must shield the world from the flash.

  Juan said to his brother, “There is no place in the human heart for nuclear war.”

  “There is no place in the human mind to prepare for what might happen,” replied Alberto.

  Although the streets of Havana were slick with the onset of drizzles auguring a heavy rainstorm, the reason that Cubanos across the island were huddled around their televisions and radios that night was in preparation to hear Castro’s rebuttal to Kennedy. The night before, Florencio and all Cubanos heard or watched Kennedy’s internationally-broadcasted announcement to the world that the United States had discovered the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal deposited on the island. The president demanded the immediate withdrawal of the nukes. He had instituted a blockade to try and resolve the crisis, and he declared that the United States sought “not the victory of might, but the vindication of right.”

  Regardless of what Kennedy asked for, Florencio knew that the bulk of Cubanos stood behind Fidel to oppose los yanquis in this final showdown of power. Economic hardship in Cuba, the result of the Eisenhower embargo, made their lives miserable at times, but Cubano machisimo would choose defense of their country over any disagreement they might have with the way Fidel was running things. Cubanos loved Fidel for stiff-arming America with his hothead bravado, and they would never think to abandon him during this ultimate call for their courage.

  Florencio observed how the readiness of the Cubano people in the face of this grave crisis seemed to elevate Fidel’s determination to give them what he always promised to give them: an independent Cuba free of American meddling. The Soviets had packed the island with warheads totaling a magnitude seventy times greater than the atomic force of the bomb that erased Hiroshima, and Fidel seemed to gloat about how the Soviets could use that power and capability to scorch the continental United States in a matter of hours, if need be.

  Florencio’s stomach ch
urned with worry about his sons. Was this really the end for everyone? This was real: the nukes were there. When he looked at the horizon, he saw a combustible abyss of red and gray, the colors ordered up for an apocalypse. The end of history appeared as a mushroom cloud in his mind, a reality now stationed on the island. Cuba’s tropical paradise was worth the cost of sacrifice in Fidel’s estimation to keep America out. Florencio considered how the future could bypass the present, and the time and place envisioned for La Revolución would become the time and place lost if a volley of nuclear bombs started lobbing across the Caribbean. Still, a war of extinction did nothing to alter the minds of Fidel’s supporters to stand firm beside him with no fear of what nothingness may entail—a beachhead spattered with poisoned blood, every rebel with a heart standing at the center of a radiation landfill, the island contaminated and not a soul to worry about it because, yes, Fidel would do it, if it meant gaining Cuba’s final independence, even in death.

  Who cared about ideology now, thought Florencio? Who harbored what? The world was close to vanquishing in an expanse of dust and ash, a black vault built on charred bones and skulls embodying dark, empty dreams. A volcanic blast would center from the middle of the sea. Florencio was ready for the desolation, the void, the annulment of Earth, the search for the next galactic order. He just wished that he could be with his sons no matter what transpired.

  Fidel’s rebuttal to Kennedy was broadcast live from a studio in the Vedado district, and Florencio watched as El Comandante gripped the handle rails of his chair and rocked back and forth in his seat as his words started off slow and uncertain. Several minutes of rambling worked their way towards the lather, towards the signature conviction that Fidel brought to every speaking engagement. A quick slice of his hand made his point, and the magnetism began. Listeners felt the pull, a hook of words spellbinding his audience with the sudden drop of the tone in his voice, a glowering in his eyes, the defiance in his raised brow, his beard bouncing. He ripped off scorn against America and Kennedy for their aggression. His long and bony fingers again slashed the air. He rose and rested in his cushioned chair. He clutched the rails harder, white knuckles to contain his voyage to the brink of what he must say to the world about Cuba and the catastrophe the Americans created on the island. He would support the destruction of silence if need be, he proclaimed. “Paz o muerte! Peace or death! Patria o muerte! Homeland or death! Venceremos! We will win!”

  After watching Fidel’s speech on television, Florencio left the one-room flat that his former boss, Don Emilio, had lent him since he came back to Havana from the cane field. He went outside and watched as Cubanos poured into the rainswept streets and alleyways of the capital city for a raucous celebration. People wrapped old rags around broomsticks and lit makeshift torches. They marched through the city chanting the Cubano national anthem. They filled the parks holding candles and swayed in a wave as if moving in a valley of stars fallen to earth. They joined together and chanted war cries as they waved meat cleavers and machetes in the air. They kept loaded pistols at their belts. Cuba was an island ready to charge into the void. With Fidel, thought Florencio, anything is possible. He felt so far away from his hijos. Juan and Alberto, he cried, Te amo.

  * * *

  Chapter 41

  By the time two Soviet vessels neared the quarantine line that Kennedy established in the Caribbean and then stopped and turned around, the crisis had peaked and then began to wind down quickly, steadying toward diplomacy and resolution. In the rapprochement, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle and remove all nuclear warheads from Cuba in exchange for an avowed guarantee from Kennedy that the U.S. would never invade the island. Fidel’s claim of “Paz o muerte!” became Jack’s call for “the vindication of right.” The Earth would live. Juan and Alberto sighed with relief. Their focus returned to hope for their father.

  Days later, during the first week of November, they finally composed the dreaded letter to their father about their mother’s sudden passing. Five weeks later, as the holiday season approached, they hadn’t received a response from him. Had the Cubano censors barred the letter’s delivery? After the Cuban Missile Crisis, crackdowns were now more severe on those who still wanted to leave. The brothers’ worries rose again.

  Then, two days before Christmas, transport planes landed in Miami carrying back the freed prisoners from the Bay of Pigs disaster. After nearly twenty months of captivity in Cubano prisons, Castro and Kennedy brokered a deal for the release of the exiles in exchange for $53 million in baby food and medicine. To welcome their safe return back to America, the survivors of the brigadista—over 1,100 strong—would gather at the Orange Bowl four days after Christmas for a ceremony in which the president and his beautiful wife would attend.

  Juan and Alberto were ecstatic about what the prospects of this remarkable negotiation between Castro and Kennedy might mean for future peace discussions and for the release of their father, seeking to leave the island. On that sunny Saturday afternoon of the twenty-ninth, the brothers hustled their way north on 27th Street, through Little Havana, to the intersection at 7th Street. From that four-way intersection, they headed east. When they reached 14th Avenue, they could see the walls of the Orange Bowl. As they walked to 3rd Street and the entrance to the stadium, a white Lincoln convertible came into view behind them on 14th Avenue. Police escorts rode in front and behind the vehicle. When Juan caught sight of the president with the first lady by his side in the backseat of the car, he felt his heart race with excitement. The couple waved to the people lining 14th Avenue as their convertible made its way to the stadium. The brothers stopped walking and waited for Kennedy and his wife to drive by where they stood on the sidewalk. The street was covered in shade. The sun angled out behind the enormous walls of the Orange Bowl. Juan felt as if the universe spun in an orbit of hope concentrated on that spot where he and his brother stood. They raised their hands to wave as the president’s convoy neared. Their eyes followed the world’s most powerful leader, and when the convertible came even with them as they stood on the sidewalk, Kennedy looked straight at the brothers. Their eye contact was tangible, the recognition immediate. Then, for no sensible reason, Juan and Alberto watched as the president hollered to his driver to stop the car. Jackie tilted her head in puzzlement as if questioning her husband: What are you doing? Why are we stopping in the middle of the street? The police escort in front and behind looked as confused as Jackie and the rest of the onlookers on the street. All the while, Juan and Alberto stood mesmerized.

  The Secret Service agents darted their eyes around, clueless why the president wanted to talk to two Hispanic boys he pointed to on the sidewalk.

  “Give me a minute,” said Jack, getting out of the car in the middle of 14th Avenue.

  As Jack’s security detail surrounded him, he walked towards the hope-drenched sidewalk where Juan and Alberto stood staring at the president as he approached them. When he was standing before them, he extended his hand to the older brother and said, “Good to see you again, Juan.” Juan lifted his hand as if in slow-motion while Alberto stood sedentary, overtaken with amazement and incredulity. As Juan shook the president’s hand, Alberto became absorbed in Jack’s inviting smile and Boston lilt. The president addressed them both: “Today is a good day, a day of peace.”

  Juan nearly choked up. His heart pounded so fast. The only thing he could think to say was, “Mr. President, this is my brother, Alberto.”

  Kennedy’s attention shifted to Alberto. They shook hands, and Jack said, “It’s an honor to meet you. I too have a very dear brother, Robert. We are close like the both of you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” uttered Alberto.

  “Well, gentlemen. I must go. Remember, peace is the word of the day, every day.”

  “Yes, I trust peace,” said Juan.

  Jack smiled and chuckled and then rapped the brothers each on their shoulders before turning around and heading back to the convertible. His Secret Service agents whisked their eyes around a
t every movement from the people on the sidewalk.

  Just as Jack was settling back into the convertible, Alberto ran into the street towards the car. Several agents lunged to block his route.

  “President Kennedy, please, I need to say one more thing . . .”

  Jack leaned over Jackie’s lap in the backseat to make sure he could hear what Alberto wanted to say.

  “. . . Will you help get our father out of Cuba?”

  Jack smiled and nodded. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “I promise. I haven’t forgotten. Your brother made a similar request to me before the election.”

  The president’s words sounded so trustworthy that Alberto thought he might cry.

  Jack sat back in his seat and waved one last time to the Ramos brothers as the convertible rolled away, headed for entry into the Orange Bowl. Alberto returned to the sidewalk next to his brother and together they tore off in a sprint to the entrance of the stadium and down the concrete corridors inside. They bounded up the stairwell to reach the grandstands. Thousands filled the seats. Cubano and American flags swung and flapped everywhere.

  The Cubano exiles down on the field were wearing their khaki-colored combat uniforms. When the President’s convertible rode onto the field, cheers from the crowd were mixed with catcalls. Near the fifty-yard line, Jack opened the butterfly doors of the convertible and strode across the blazing green grass. The brothers watched as he now shook hands with every man lined up in groups around the field, some on crutches, others too weak sitting in chairs.

  The Brigade leader, Erneido Oliva, presented a folded rebel flag to Kennedy. Then all the members of the returning brigadista stood and began chanting: “Guerra! Guerra!” and “Libertad! Libertad!” The crowd joined in and echoed the shout. The stadium levitated in a roar: War! versus Freedom!